I was chatting with a vegan friend today about my newfound interest in Primal eating and living.
She said to me that Grok's life expectancy was only 35 yrs. ( ok she didn't say Grok...).

Do we know how/why Grok was dying at such a young age? My friend was implying heart disease from eating too much meat.

01-16-2013, 10:52 PM

cori93437

/headdesk

No.

01-16-2013, 11:01 PM

Dirlot

Go out into the wilds and try and survive with a stone and a sling against a grizzly.
Diet was NOT a factor.

01-16-2013, 11:09 PM

cori93437

[QUOTE=Dirlot;1064264]Go out into the wilds and try and survive with a stone and a sling against a grizzly.
Diet was NOT a factor.[/QUOTE]

Without modern medicine... infection anyone?
Contagious diseases that are now controlled with vaccinations...
Plus any strife between neighboring tribes...

Also infant and childbirth mortality.
Those skew the numbers pretty quick.

Diet.
Not unless you include famine years from lack of rain, flood, and other possible natural occurrences.

01-16-2013, 11:31 PM

JoanieL

It's like the whole thing with indoor/outdoor cats. The average indoor cat lives about 17 years; the average outdoor cat lives about 12 years. But that's misleading because a lot of outdoor cats die in their first year because they don't catch on quickly about cars. Once you take out the kittens who die because they don't know cars are deadly, there's not much difference.

Take out woman who die in childbirth and babies who die from whatever, and Grok probably lived a nice long life.

01-16-2013, 11:54 PM

Hedonist2

Classic example of lying with statistics. HGs who survive the dangers mentioned above live plenty long enough to have heart attacks. But they don't have them. And look at our nearer ancestors. Grand parents in my case. Maybe great great in your case. They ate plenty of animal fat and lived long lives. My ancestors going back 500 years typically lived into their 70s, and did not have heart attacks.

And, no, they didn't all work really, really hard. They were more active than we are though.

01-17-2013, 12:24 AM

Huntress

Even into the 1700s AVERAGE life expectancy in the western world was only about 35. It is only because of modern medicine (particularly infant mortality, ability to fight infection and diseases such as the flu etc) that we now have an average life expectancy that is higher. The key work is AVERAGE, no everyone lives that long/little - its an averge (and high numbers of child and infant deaths skew it massively).

When I was in Austria touring through a monastery I was shocked to learn that there was an average life expectancy of 19 for the monks in the middle ages. Now, their diet had virtually no meat whatsoever and they were certainly active, tending fields etc. they were prob dying from exposure, illness and infection.

01-17-2013, 12:53 AM

Knifegill

Why is nobody saying it? Yes, hunter-gatherers routinely live into their 80's in good, active health!

01-17-2013, 01:23 AM

Lisa

I'll have to ask her where she got the 35yrs from.
She also tells me that the link between meat eating and heart disease is undeniable. I'm not into reading "studies" and ""statistics" so really don't know where she gets her info. (she just sounds so knowlegable and convincing)

Can someone direct me to some info about meat not causing heart attacks? Anything here I could be reading to better educate myself? (and argue with her some more)

01-17-2013, 01:29 AM

Knifegill

I don't think there is even any info to suggest meat does cause heart attacks!

She got the 35 years because that's an average. You've got a huge pile of dead babies and clumsy kids who end up as midnight snacks dragging the number down, and then a bunch of healthy adults making it into old age, but not enough of them to pull the number back up.